All posts tagged "schadenfreude"

The Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung is a distinguished if conservative paper, and their arts column recently featured an article which I translate below. It's rough, and I'm not a native speaker, and a little rusty, but I think this might provoke some people to do their own research at least.

Imagine a country where they speak a language which hasn't been written down since its emergence. So first you have to find a way to write it, so you can publish books in this language, which has also only just happened in a few cases in the last maybe 10 years. A language which hasn't been translated into a single book in German. A language which even in its own country can only be read by less than 5% of the population (and written by even fewer; there are no accurate figures on this). In the best case the total number of readers of this language is about 200 000 people. The country in question is the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the year 2012. It's called New Zealand. And the language is Maori.

Now one might object that the language of the indigenous people is in fact one of two languages of New Zealand, of which the other is English, and that the New Zealand literature which we are familiar with in this country -- Catherine (sic) Mansfield of course, Janet Frame, perhaps also Frank Sargeson or Patricia Grace -- was composed in English and has long been translated. But Jürgen Boos, the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, in conversation with this newspaper left no doubt that New Zealand's guest appearance was about one thing above all: "It's the Maori culture which is being presented to us. I've just come to understand in the last few months that it's not lip service, the cultures overlap." So the absence of books from the book fair does not frighten.

Narrative media

Indeed it's probably a reaction to the big transformation the German book trade is undergoing, if Boos at yesterday's press conference for the guest of honour New Zealand highlighted the "transmedial [multimedia? dunno, not in my dictionaries] story telling" in Maori culture and therefore also promised a "transmedial mass performance" for October. In fact, the Maori have a rich narrative tradition, which isn't just transmitted orally but also through carving, textile art, tattoo, dance and painting. But which of these is appropriate for the fair itself, outside the guest of honour pavilion, which traditionally offers a multimedia presentation of the current country? The book fair boss cites workshops and exhibits, and above all films: "it's probably generally simpler to arouse interest in an author through film. That's a huge theme here at the book conference."

One can see that. Three costumed midgets stand at the entrance to the new house of books at Frankfurt -- a foretaste of Peter Jackson's pending Tolkien film "The Hobbit", the first part of which is supposed to break all movie records at the end of this year and gives a welcome reason to put on hobbit cosplay. Earlier editions of such costume competitions were at times the public exhibits that won the most participants at the fair. And for New Zealand, its reputation as a fantasy location is at least as important as the Sagas are for Iceland, which last year put on a universally praised guest country entry in Frankfurt. New Zealand has to measure up to that -- but apparently not literarily.

At that, Kevin Chapman, the head of the New Zealand publishers assocation can proudly announce that sixty authors -- obviously mostly English-speaking -- will come to Frankfurt and by the fair up to 100 books from his country -- obviously in English -- will be newly translated. Up until now it was only around ten a year. Nonetheless, it's a vanishingly small number in comparison to other guest countries.

It shows the lack of daring on the German side that a wonderful novel like "Gifted" by Patrick Evans has found no German publisher, although since its appearance in 2010 in New Zealand it has been celebrated for its subtle depiction of the legendary cohabitation of the two authors Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame in the years 1956/57. But then Evans isn't first on the travel list for Frankfurt at all. By contrast Alan Duff was just recently a New Zealand author on an official junket in Germany, uniting the advantages of having Maori descent and having written the book that led to the film "Once Were Warriors."

It hinges on food and drink
Many of the hundred hoped-for new translations will be travel and cook books. That's wholly in keeping with the New Zealand government's intentions. The speech given by Lisa Futschek, the acting ambassador in Germany, gave a foretaste: no word about literature, everything revolved around food and drink in New Zealand. Even for Jürgen Boos this was too transmedial, especially since Ms Futschek didn't once offer the obligatory Maori greetings, which otherwise were compulsory at this exhibition.

We by contrast will learn some broken Maori this autumn at the book fair, that's for sure. But whether the guest country's programme will succeed in transmitting the seriousness of its cultural concerns beyond the allure of the exotic? We have certainly become more open to new forms of narrative in recent years. But at a book fair, it's the books that count.

Why do I think we have a bubble? Some people point to "affordability" (the ratio of house prices to people's pay) as a critical problem that we ought to do something about, but I think we need to look at rental yield (the ratio of rents to house prices). It turns out that rental yields on residential property are very low in historical terms. So low that you'd be far better off with your money on term deposit than collecting the rent on a house.

Now, if there were genuinely a shortage of houses, you'd expect the opposite. You'd expect rents to rise as people tried to find somewhere to live and landlords exercised their pricing power, especially since the goverment subsidy (the accomodation supplement) effectively drives up rents. That hasn't happened.

If we don't have a shortage, what's been driving up house prices? The answer is speculative bidding by people convinced that house prices only ever go up. I think those people are about to discover the truth in a financially painful way. And while it would be nice to do something about our unfair tax system which privileges property speculators, we don't really need to do anything about affordability, because it's going to take care of itself. I can't wait.

(Note: if you own a house and have a painful mortgage, you have my sympathy. As long as you weren't planning on flicking it on at a profit in the next couple of years, hang in there, and I'm sure it'll all come right for you again.)

Dad was visiting the last few days, and we were talking about this stuff last night. He observed that the 1987 crash put the boomers off shares and steered them into property. I wonder if a housing crash over the next year will reverse that for my generation?

Too bad my late Mum isn't around to read this. I seem to remember the League figuring in our household discussions as a kid. I'll have to check with Dad.

Without even a whimper, the New Zealand League of Rights, this country’s oldest far-right pressure group, has closed its doors, unnoticed, unmourned.

For three decades, the league was the most active, effective group of its kind with the biggest membership, peddling a mix of Jewish conspiracies, anti-communism, white supremacy, Anglican Christianity and respectful hat-doffing to the Queen and the flag. It operated a bookstore off Queen Street, Auckland and held regular public meetings addressed by like-minded conservative overseas speakers and local politicians like Ben Couch and George Gair. It supported apartheid in South Africa, opposed honouring the Treaty of Waitangi and tried unsuccessfully to bring the British revisionist historian David Irving to New Zealand. But despite its long years of political activism, which included its supporters heavily infiltrating the Social Credit party, it was also an anachronism, a last ray of a colonial empire over which the sun long ago set.

When its last and longest-serving national director, Bill Daly, turned the league’s lights out for the last time, the moment appears not to have been marked in any way.